Engineering 4 Kids (e4k) - a kid-friendly exploration of everything engineering as a collection of stories about people, places and things, design challenges, projects, games - all yours to discover

engineering4kids.org - domain name, blog
Collection - stories, wiki, web service WikiSpaces

Audience : Middle school, self-directed
  • Most teachers have little or no background in Engineering, no time and no support so the E in STeM is “silent”. We are here to help. We are building a collection of stories, resources and activities for kids to discover Engineering on their own.

Stories - some examples of the broad range of topics included

Feedback, suggestions on...
  • story layout - template - order, coverage good
  • introduction - keywords, definitions, links to more comprehensive content, picture, illustration, people
  • What's the problem? - engineering design process - prompts and questions, facts and questions - Statue of Liberty
    Ask (What? Ask questions, understand the need, identify the problem, define) * Imagine (So what? Imagine, brainstorm, explore, discover) * Plan (Now what? Plan, design) * Create (Do it. Create, try it out) * Improve (If this then what? Improve, make it better)
  • That's engineering * Engineering ideas - connecting to engineering thinking, systems, components
  • Do it - activities that kids can do on their own, online games, simulations, hands-on with no / minimum supervision
  • News, updates, Learn more... - more links to related online resources, additions to basic content
  • ..r0 work in progress - outline and some information, but needs work - Computer Aided Engineering, Nuclear, Pacemaker - fine as placeholder - may actually be enough information, even if not complete
  • tags - categories, number per story

Who...
  • advisory board - kids - what works, what's missing - story format, sections, content areas, navigation, classification
  • reviewers - check stories - complete, interesting, identify missing items
  • engineers - reviews, advise, suggest - subject matter experts, what's the engineering here?
  • contributors - research - information, activities, pictures, videos. suggest additional stories, topics
  • authors - edit existing stories, write new stories
  • media - pictures, animations, video - Wikimedia Commons, Flickr BY.NC.SA, YouTube, Vimeo
  • curators - manage collection

Resources - sources of content for additional stories

About e4k
  • work in progress, always CBB (could be better)
  • doing, thinking, asking - engineering, applied math and science
  • kid-friendly sources, open, ever-green, updates, mostly links to other sources with summary, description
  • Creative Commons - BY-SA-NC - Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial - all e4k, most (but not all) sources, too
  • contributors - kids, engineers, educators, parents, global community